Hannah's story (From Gazette & Herald)

Hannah's story

Gazette & Herald columnist Hannah Gibbons, from Scagglethorpe, near Malton, was on holiday with her family in the Maldives when the earthquake and subsequent tidal waves struck on Boxing Day. In this moving account she describes what happened when the monster waves struck and how her family survived the ordeal.

To quote from the last column I wrote: "Christmas time...is thoroughly predictable." Maybe, but battling a tsunami on Boxing Day is surely a far cry from the traditional bubble and squeak fry-up.

To begin with my sister was most concerned about the snorkels. "We'll have to pay for them if they get swept away," she shouted as she pulled the hired gear off the balcony of our water bungalow on the Maldivian island of Hakuraa, and away from the 8ft wave that had just surged up to the glass patio doors.

At that point Steph, Emily and I simply thought that the tide was frighteningly high and hadn't connected it with the earth tremor we had felt three hours previously - that is, until a couple of seconds later when water began to bubble up through the wooden floor, and eventually snapped the panels in two with big, dull creaks that shook the whole room.

It was when the TV fell through the hole in the floor, the patio door crashed inwards slashing my sister's leg and the water poured in and rose to shoulder height that we knew the room would protect us no longer.

In the terrible panic that followed, I've since been told that Emily managed to kick the locked door down and we clung desperately together to the only wall that was left standing of our bungalow - although I can barely remember anything other than noticing a copy of Vanity Fair swell past and cursing the loss of a school library book. Thankfully, the water subsided enough for us to run on the precarious, over-water boardwalk to the island (now covered in knee deep sewage and oil-slickened sea flurry) where we discovered mum and dad, relieved at finding the three children they thought they had lost, but simultaneously sick with fear for our grandmother, who was still missing.

While my parents risked their lives in the face of the second tidal wave to search for her, my sisters and I waded through the water and debris covering the island to get to the restaurant, where the roof was the only dry place.

People were reacting typically to a disaster in which they knew they were safe - hysterically smashing glasses while scrambling to safety, swearing, bleeding and crying.

The only silent ones were the ones who were still waiting to find a loved one - a small group of the quasi-bereaved sat in a corner praying, wishing to be anywhere else. I tried to be transported away from the paralysing fear of death by holding my breath and hoping for unconsciousness.

After the third tidal wave my parents returned in a quiet resignation that comes with the knowledge that a 7st pensioner had been through a tsunami with the power to wreck houses.

But something had saved my grandma (although how could I account it to God when so many were lost?) who had been swept out to sea, miraculously pulled out of the water by people on a boat and was returned to us chirpy and most definitely alive.

The delirium of the reunion was short-lived when, from the rooftop, a shout came that the only remaining missing man had been found.

I looked through the space in the corrugated iron roofing and saw the man lying face down in the tide with his arms flat on the sea, as if he was about to pray, or he was putting his hands up ready to be shot.

His wife and daughter were forced to endure the entire rescue mission with us, in agony piled upon agony.

After a few hours of waiting, with a general, jovial belief that soon the sea planes would be sure to come and pick us up, the hotel staff told us to get into boats as another tsunami was feared and a boat would be the safest place in which to face it.

We didn't feel altogether safe on the choppy sea in our fluorescent life jackets, but after we'd travelled for an hour we reached an inhabited island, less affected by the disaster and were taken to the school hall - an open plan, concrete shelter that was to be our home for the night.

In an uncomfortable authority rejig, in which the waiters and staff from our hotel were now in the same position as we were, if not worse for fearing for their own families, they still continued to prepare a meal for the guests and continuously provide water.

True personalities were to emerge, with their immense kindness touching us all, and with the ignorance of certain British shining through with a Cockney's "Oi mate, I'll have a beer" joke to a waiter who was anxiously praying for his family in Sri Lanka.

The undesirable aspects of my fellow survivors became even more pronounced once they'd had a good meal and were wrapped up in their snatched gingham table cloths, ready to begin the moaning session.

I queued outside the sans seats, paper or flush toilets and a woman launched a verbal crusade that made me consider just slipping off behind a palm tree rather than getting my ear battered.

It transpired that she and another couple of 'troopers' had set up camp on the restaurant roof back at the ruined hotel, found a Calor gas stove for the cuppas and constructed a tent from the napkins.

Whether they gave themselves a tribe name or not, I never found out, but she wasn't best pleased to have been physically removed from her refuge. ''I knew what people would be like, you see," she confided.

"All panicking for no reason - people go crazy in emergencies. I knew what it would be like. I've travelled, you see."

I ventured to ask where she had travelled that had obviously prepared her so well for the natural disaster. "Me and my husband, we go to Benidorm most summers."

A freezing night ensued, and I didn't sleep for enviously wishing for the designer clothes that the Italians had managed to salvage and hang up to dry.

But at five in the morning we were woken with news that a Pakistani warship was able to rescue us, and later we were taken in tuna boats out to the navy boat, not before having witnessed the bodies of many people being taken off the island in a separate boat.

To get on the Pakistani ship was the hugest rush of emotion I can remember having - absolute elation. But I was so hot, sleepless and frightened that I chose to collapse for about ten minutes and woke up with a 'Pakistan Navy Ship' baseball cap on - a tourist until the end.

We reached Male, the capital island of the Maldives, at six in the evening where we were taken to the International school, and met with such indescribable kindness from the people whose own lives had probably been devastated by the waves.

My dad and I ventured out of the compound in search of some clean clothes to wear - I was getting funny looks from the locals, although I couldn't decide whether it was because my shoulders and leg were bare, or because I was still in my pyjamas.

In the first shop we came to a woman insisted on giving us clothes not just for ourselves, but for everyone we knew, and refused to take our money despite having just told us that her own island had been washed away with the waves.

We ended up having to drop the money on the floor and run, such was the selfless generosity of the Maldivian people.

We left for Gatwick at five the next morning having lost all possessions, but that was all.

I was given a tetanus jab by a woman whose father was still missing, a bowl of rice by a boy whose home had been washed away - I feel sick with guilt at how eagerly I took these things, how crazily unfair it is that I should have my life above 150,000 other people.

The money that the Government has donated to the relief operation roughly equates to the price of the flyover to McDonalds on the motorway past York.

I saw one life lost, and the devastation that a person's death can cause is immeasurable; others must be spared.

Updated: 11:55 Wednesday, January 05, 2005